The US President Donald Trump received information earlier this month that China sought to pay non-state actors to attack American forces in Afghanistan, a senior administration official told CNN. 

The intelligence, which will be declassified by the Trump administration, was provided to the President in his daily brief on December 17, the official said. NSA Robert O'Brien discussed the information with the President that same day, the official told CNN.  

POLITICO also reported that the US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien briefed President Donald Trump on the unconfirmed allegations on Dec. 17, according to two other senior administration officials. But they stressed that the intelligence, first reported by Axios on Wednesday, is uncorroborated. 

In fact, the intelligence is “very thin” — thinner even than reports that Russia offered payments to the Taliban to target US and coalition troops, which were never corroborated, the first senior US official told POLITICO. 

The official went on to describe the recent intelligence as “rumors" and lacking “hard evidence.” 

But the allegations involving Chinese operatives in Afghanistan are being handled very differently by Trump officials than the those involving Moscow earlier this year, according to the report. 

The US “treats this intelligence with caution, but any intelligence or reports relating to the safety of US forces is something we take very seriously,” said the official.

President-elect Joe Biden's transition team will seek to learn "as much as we can about these allegations," said a transition official, noting that the news is "another illustration of why we need full cooperation" from the Pentagon. Biden earlier this week accused Defense Department leadership of obstructing the transition, according to the report.